Kids Game Takes Aim At Music Pirates

Thanks to the San Jose Mercury News for reprinting a report about an educational videogame company who've decided to theme their next title around music piracy. According to the piece, the developers, MGI, who are not being funded by the RIAA or any other music industry groups, "...had set out to create a game about the yo-ho-ho kind of pirates. But when [MGI] started researching the topic of piracy, they were overwhelmed with information about music copyrights." An official press release on the MGI site reveals: "Loosely based on the Treasure Island story, this new PC game will... caricature music piracy, embodied especially in the figure of Captain Bootleg." The nefarious Captain Bootleg has run off with the 'Music Treasure', and "...a young boy named Ma, top agent of the Funny Bureau of Investigations ('FBI'), who... carries a laptop, must find the Island and recover the Music Treasure."

Comments

Explain to Kids

[4of12]

How when music is "pirated" that the "music treasure" is copied, there will be two copies of treasure! The first treasure owner can still play the music all they want!

Explain that "copying treasure" is Very Bad.

You can see how this is Very Bad, can't you?

Your inbred human tuition should make you recoil in revulsion from even thinking about giving away anything with a (c).

It is so Evil that I'm sure most of the world's major religions have strict prohibitions against it.

Re:Explain to Kids

[uncoveror]

Comparing unauthorized copying to rape, murder, and robbery on the high seas is terribly sensational. This "game" is a piece of RIAA/MPAA propaganda whether they will admit to it or not. Don't buy CDs.

Re:Explain to Kids

[musikit]

but if we don't but CDs it just makes it easier for them to replace CDs with a more DRM limiting technology.

Re:Explain to Kids

[KDan]

If you don't buy CD to hurt the RIAA and you buy DRM music instead you're a few sandwiches short of a picnic...

Daniel

Re:Explain to Kids

[fuzzybunny]

Well, Alan Greenspan says that copying treasure leads to too much treasure, which results in treasure inflation, which means treasure is worth a lot less, putting all the nice people working in the treasure hoarding industry out of business!

Music is exactly the same. When you keep duplicating it, it no longer has the precious value of a unique piece of art, leading to lack of appreciation for it. And this, kids, is exactly the reason why I want to KICK THE SHIT OUT OF THE NEXT F)_@*$!# DEPARTMENT STORE ELEVATOR PLAYING *!@#!ING BOY BAND CRAP.

So remember kids. Don't duplicate that Britney Spears CD. Instead, lock it up in the cellar, where it'll be safe from the pirates.

Won't somebody think of the pirates?

A better game proposal

[AtariAmarok]

A better game proposal: "NapLeech".

Your character runs around town, smashing into music stores and stealing CD's (a "Grand Theft Music"). If there is any Brittany Spears playing near by, health goes down. but Beatles music improves your health.

Monsters resembling Hilary Rosen and Orren Hatch bedevil you every step. The stolen CD's have to be trucked to a warehouse.

When you are through playing the game, you go look in the MyMusic folder and find it full of the music from the CDs you stole in the game.

bittorrent link?

[Numeric]

i'd like a bootleg copy of it!
</joke>

Plot of the game

[cgenman]

First the rights to music are stolen from its creators. This music is locked away from all of the world in a small island. The player must download musical clues from any remote section of the world they can, learning about the area's unique musical tradition and heritage. Eventually the player finds his way to Los An... Secret Pirate Island. The game ends when the evil thief is thrown in jail, and the music heritage of the world is set free for all.

That sounds about right.

Uhhh....

[hookedup]

I installed the game...and...well...i dont seem to have _any_ of my mp3s on my computer anymore, what happened? :)

Prepare to have your buckles swashed

[Decaffeinated Jedi]

So, they're going to associate music piracy with actual "yo-ho-ho-and-a-bottle-of-rum" piracy in this post-Pirates of the Caribbean era, and they expect kids not to think that it's even cooler than they already do? Sounds a bit counter-intuitive to me...

Music copying similar to monetary counterfeiting

[Alphanos]

I think that the best crime to compare music 'piracy' to is probably monetary counterfeit. In the case of copying music, you can create exact copies of the original, you get/create something for nothing, and on a small scale it doesn't decrease the value of the original.

However, just as widespread monetary counterfeit would lead to economic problems if it could not be halted in some way, widespread copying of music has caused a devaluation of the legal copies of the music. If music copying reaches a certain critical mass, it could greatly reduce the number of bands producing new music as they would be unable to support themselves, thus leading to a kind of music recessation. It'll be some time before we discover one way or the other whether such problems will occur as a result of music copying.

Now I'm not trying to support the RIAA, and I realize that the big music companies rip off artists with the way they do business. However, I think everyone here knows that that isn't really a great reason in favour of copying the artists' music:P. It's a wise idea to consider the long-term consequences of our actions; forgetting to do so is how we get ourselves into messes like global warming.

Buccaneers...

[Bonewalker]

'I see, you're a pirate, eh? Well, where's your buccaneers?

Under my buckin' hat!" - Dick, Third Rock From the Sun

Definition of 'buccaneer' by www.m-w.com:

1 : any of the freebooters preying on Spanish ships and settlements especially in the West Indies in the 17th century; broadly : PIRATE
2 : an unscrupulous adventurer especially in politics or business

*emphasis mine

What will this teach kids?

[jonathan_the_ninja]

It will teach kids that whoever conceived the idea for this game had an idiotic idea and/or is an idiot. Honestly, do they think that because they played a game where they cracked down on music "piracy" that it's going to influence them not to use Kazaa, or WinMX for sharing mp3s? I personally doubt it. Just like when they play Doom it's going to teach them to take their Dad's shotgun and kill mister former sergeant down the road (an army veteran) because of their Doom experience.